


Hiatus

by Janice_Lester



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s06e15 The French Mistake, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-10
Updated: 2011-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-27 04:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janice_Lester/pseuds/Janice_Lester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen and Jared wake up on the sound stage in the aftermath of Dean and Sam's visit.  Can they keep their show on the air with several of the cast and crew dead?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hiatus

**Author's Note:**

> Silly. This is confusingly fanfiction (not RPF) based on _canon_ RPF. Since the "Jared" and "Jensen" native to the alternate universe we see in 6.15 are not intended to be "our" real life Jared and Jensen, I've characterised them pretty much exclusively based on what is said or implied in the episode. Seriously, don't read this if you haven't seen 6.15. Beta'd by [](http://ellethill.livejournal.com/profile)[ellethill](http://ellethill.livejournal.com/).

 

 

Jensen Ackles was not having a good day. First, he’d woken up on a deserted sound stage virtually on top of Prissy Padalecki. Dude claimed to have no clue how they got there, and insisted that the last thing he could remember was getting ready to perform their big jumping-through-a-window stunt for 6.15. Which just happened to be the last thing Jensen could remember, as well, but that didn’t automatically mean that Padalecki wasn’t a lying asshat who lied.

Fortunately, he’d managed to exit the sound stage (which was inexplicably roped off with crime scene tape—perhaps some idiot had gone and greenlit _CSI: Vancouver_ or something?) without setting off any alarms or being harassed by lot security, even though, as he discovered when he made it to his car (parked by an outline of a dead body in white tape), it was five in the fricking morning. Jared’s labrador-loyal bodyguard was asleep in his car, so that was the end of Jensen’s obligatory vague concern for his annoying co-star’s wellbeing. He went straight home, self-medicated, self-abused in the absence of wife (off doing a Thing somewhere, couldn’t remember, not important), and tucked himself in for a much needed eight hours.

He woke to fifteen voicemails from his agent, five from Sera Gamble, whoever she was (one of the writers?), which he skipped, and one from that ET reporter who’d let him slip his business card with his cell number on it down her impressive cleavage.

“Jensen? I’d really love to get an exclusive on the future of _Supernatural_ in this current crisis. Hell, I’d even make it worth your while for a little off the record about what you’re going to do now, and whether you’ve heard anything about cancellation, and who’ll be speaking at Misha’s funeral—”

At this point, Jensen had to put down his phone and fire up his laptop to make sure it wasn’t April first. Which it wasn’t. Not even close. So, since he was here… He typed “supernatural cw” into Google and scanned the news headlines that came up. And had to check that date again, several times.

Misha was dead?

Murdered?

 _Kripke_ was dead, murdered?

And someone had actually decided to make _Octocobra?_

When his phone buzzed with a text message— _Dude, we need to talk. Like, NOW. This is career 911. Jared._ —Jensen made the unprecedented choice of actually calling him back.

“Jensen. You up with the latest news?”

Jensen couldn’t help his yawn. “I gather that Misha and Kripke were murdered.”

“Along with Singer and various other members of the crew, yeah. They say a deranged extra did it. He’s in jail, apparently thinks he’s an angel on the side of the archangel Raphael.”

“Fucking wonderful. What is it with people who can’t grok that _it’s only a TV show?_ ”

“Tell me about it. So, there’s a lot of public sympathy, and we’re getting the front page of _Variety_. But we need to be making all the right noises if we’re going to strike a deal to keep the show on the air. And obviously, Castiel will have to be recast.”

Jensen smiled. “I am _so_ going to argue for a hot chick with great big angelic—”

“Absolutely,” Jared said, completely flat. “That _is_ by far the most important thing.”

“Oh, blow me, would you?”

“I thought you didn’t swing that way?”

“Dude, do you have anything worthwhile to say to me? Because I’d much rather be taking a gigantic dump than talking to you.”

“You’re sweet. Listen, the other thing is that apparently I—or we—have a couple days missing from our memories. And in those couple days, we were walking around acting like best buddies and completely fucking up every single scene. Misha’s last scene, where Castiel explains about Raphael and the weapons? Completely unusable. Even if we can keep _Supernatural_ on the air, we’re still going to have to go on hiatus.”

“Fricken wonderful.”

“But it’s not our fault and it’s not the result of industrial action, so we’ll probably still get paid.”

“Paid vacation? I’m liking this a little more.”

“And apparently we smuggled something in from Mexico. My email tells me I bought some kind of Catholic saint relic online. Clint says he thinks we were possessed or something. We totally freaked him out.”

The idea of Clint being freaked out was seriously fucking disturbing. “Dude, possession? Total bullshit.”

“I know. But, man, there was _someone_ in my house, and he looked like me and he didn’t know my wife’s name and he told her he had a headache and couldn’t fuck her. Let’s just say that is phenomenally out of character.”

“Yeah,” Jensen breathed, suddenly dreamy. “Your wife _is_ a total babe. I would _definitely_ be willing to slurp on her—”

“For your own safety, I’d advise you not to finish that sentence.”

“Fine. Pissant. So what do we do?”

“Call your agent. Get her—”

“Him.”

“You switched agents?”

“Obviously.”

“All right. Get _him_ to call my people and come up with some kinda plan. Tell them you and I are willing to do what it takes to keep this show on the air.”

Jensen frowned. “Are we sure we want—?”

“We’re sure we don’t want the bad press of _not_ having fought for the show that made us Names, especially right after we allegedly spent two days trying to sabotage that show.”

“Gotcha. Can we stop talking now?”

“With pleasure.”

Jensen’s apartment felt uncomfortably quiet after he’d hung up. So he visited the bathroom and, yeah, definitely more pleasant than talking to Jared.

***

Three days later, Jensen and Jared were in LA, doing the chat show and entertainment magazine circuit: _Ellen_ , _Entertainment Tonight_ , _E!_. They had a tentative booking in Chicago with Oprah coming up.

“Pretty big acting challenge,” Jensen offered, by way of an olive branch, in the back seat of the town car.

Jared carefully smothered his yawn without touching his makeup. “Yeah. Hard enough to sell _poor Misha_ simultaneously with _the show must go on_ , but to be all ra-ra-ra about this public audition for his replacement?”

“Don’t say replacement,” Jensen advised. “We’re looking for a fine young actor who can step into, if never actually fill, Misha’s gigantic but unassuming shoes.”

“Good line,” Jared said. “So, do you think the public can actually tell a good actor from a bar of soap?”

Jensen felt sure there was a Katherine Heigl joke in there somewhere, but couldn’t seem to find it. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we? I suppose the writers can always shift the emphasis to Balthazar until they can wrap up the angel plot for good. Do we know how many scripts they have in hand?”

“They’re good ‘til the end of the season, apparently. They’ll be busily rewriting now. Oh, and that Castiel-flashback episode will probably have to be scrapped. They just won’t be able to cobble together what they need from existing footage.”

“Think now’s a good time for me to pitch my idea about—”

“Nope. It’ll never be a good time for that, Hackles.”

“Screw you, Badalecki.”

“Nice to see you boys are still talking,” Clint put in, from the driver’s seat. He was promptly flipped two birds.

***

Misha’s funeral was going to be a DVD extra. Jensen thought the little egotist might actually have got a kick out of that.

They got quite a few requests to wear sombre suits and do photo-shoots.

And this public audition thing turned out to be press and ratings _dynamite_. The network showed the auditions process as a web series, and so many people watched that they decided to do a short reality TV series for actual broadcast. Which meant Jensen had to stop admiring the various female Castiel-wannabes quite so adoringly, but, hey, he was getting paid for it. And his TiVo had promised to record the whole series, so he could always admire the lovelies later, in the privacy of his own home.

Millions of people—more than ten million, in fact—tuned in to watch the first appearance of the new Castiel. Jensen and Jared had been required not to drop any names until the air-date, which had been annoying. But it was done now, and the public had their brand new nobody as the new Castiel, having rejected the likes of Christina Milian and Anton Yelchin.

“Dude,” Jared said, lowering the newspaper that was making it kinda hard for his make-up chick to do her thing, “we might have an actual _hit show_ on our hands.”

“And all it took was a hit man who thought he was an angel, huh?” Jensen blinked and mentally reviewed what he’d just heard. “Wait, did you say _hit_?”

“Twelve point five three million people tuned in for the much-delayed episode 6.16. These days, that’s a lotta people.”

“Huh. Do you think that means we can get a raise?”

“Not likely. Apparently we blackmailed Singer into getting us one already, back during The Week We Don’t Remember.”

“Oh. Yay us? So, you all ready for the new-new season six?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“You know what I miss?” Jensen mused. “I miss when you and I didn’t, you know, speak.”

Jared sighed. “Yeah, those were good times, weren’t they? But apparently Our Public likes to see us as a united front, turning our shared grief over Misha’s untimely demise into the best performances of our careers…”

“Idiots.”

“Yeah, but you gotta love ‘em. If not for them—”

“You wouldn’t be able to afford your alpaca.”

“Touché, man. Touché.”

***END***


End file.
